


Roads

by candle_beck



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-06
Updated: 2011-04-06
Packaged: 2017-10-17 16:49:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/178943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life in motion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roads

**Author's Note:**

> Flagship Supernatural story, written after having seen the first five episodes.

Roads  
By Candle Beck

Sam can't sleep and maybe he'll never sleep again.

From the shotgun seat, all the towns look the same and Dean is rattling his hands on the wheel. Dean is telling stupid jokes and grinning at him.

Sometimes, the streets don't even have names. State Road 42. Route 28. North a hundred and eighty degrees when Dean finally admits that they've been driving in the wrong direction for the past two hours. Sam's life is fucked up and blinded by gas station lights shining on the black of the car.

The car is so goddamn black.

They eat fast food and in little nothing diners in little nothing towns, pink and white checkerboard floor like pale bloodshot eyes, and Dean is flirting with the waitress, his mouth twisted. Sam is writing Jess's name in ketchup on his plate with fry.

He's not sure where they're going, somewhere terrible, no doubt. Somewhere where people are dying in a fierce and unforgivable manner, dust in his eyes and scratches on Dean's forearm because Sam held on too tight.

They were boys and they stood together in a closet with their foreheads together and winter coats covering them up like arms, shivering with terror and whispering in unison, _i believe in ghosts, i believe in what i cannot see._ Their father was outside in the hallway with a silver crucifix and a crossbow, screaming at them to stay put.

They were taught well.

Dean tells him to sleep, but Dean can go to hell. Sam's already been. Dean's hand is on the back of his neck and that's good enough. Dean's got calluses on his fingers and scars on his knuckles and his thumb is pressing into the highest knob of Sam's spine, under a fringe of hair, and Dean is saying, "You need a haircut."

Sam is smiling.

In motels, Dean can sleep through anything. Demons crawl across his chest and Sam is sitting in the single chair, humming Metallica. He's learned not to trust it, the slip of shadows like claws over Dean's T-shirt, the touch of his teeth to his lower lip, the way Sam gets so fucking scared for him sometimes that it's a flood. When Sam closes his eyes, he sees blue flame and blood on his own face, watching this like a movie.

Dean shifts and his shirt pulls up and Sam will get up in a minute or two, tug it back into place. Dean sleeps on his stomach like he's already dead.  
Infomercials are all right, even better on mute with Led Zeppelin on Dean's Discman, in Sam's ears. The television will synch up with the music for long surreal stretches of time, and Sam will forget for a little while that he swore he'd never go back to this.

Sam brings Dean coffee in the morning and sits on the edge of the bed. Dean grunts and butts his head into Sam's side, his hand clutching at Sam's knee. Dean sometimes forgets the no-touchy-feely-crap rule when he's just woken up. Sometimes he forgets it other times, too. Sam doesn't mind.

Two cups of coffee and four candy bars and they're back on the road. Whole life on the road with spring-green highway signs and fields, fields, corn and wheat and chaff and god knows. Black crows out there and Sam can't stop seeing everything as an omen these days.

These days Dean is the only thing that makes any kind of sense.

They were both teenagers and drinking stolen beer by the river, their old rope still tied to the tree and moving like the world's slowest pendulum. Shotguns and scythes in the trunk of the car, ash smeared on their faces. Dean was drunk and laughing, biting the tough material of Sam's coat.

"If killing is evil but the things we kill are evil, what's that make us?" Sam tried to ask his brother. Slurring every word and Sam could feel the hard ridge of Dean's teeth on his shoulder through the layers of fabric and the slippery autumn wind making the skin of his arms prickle. Dean just laughed, pushed his hand into Sam's hair.

Dean says, "Dude," with his hand on Sam's chest and Sam slams awake, gasping.

Sam is trying to remember if he has ever seen Dean scared. He knows he must have at some point, between wraiths and vengeful ghosts and all that walks wicked on the face of the earth, and if not then, then on a plane. But Dean is always smirking and straightening his shoulders and reloading.

Everything that's gone small in their rearview mirror, and Dean's hand on Sam's chest. Sam's heart is grief-stricken and panicked, rabbitting against the press of Dean's palm, and Sam can hear from somewhere way far off, _the day will come when evil has been delivered from this land and you will be so redeemed._

Sam knocks Dean's hand away and turns up the radio. Dean moves towards him and Sam says, "Don't," and Dean puts his hands back on the wheel.

Another ragged tavern, same bartender and regulars with faces creased like the money they leave on the bar. They're allowed to have fun, Dean is always telling him, but Sam doesn't think that's right. This is an unholy business, cheerless and lonely.

Their father is in the corner, nursing a whiskey, and Sam has closed half the distance, joyful tears in his eyes, when Dean catches his shoulder and pulls him back, saying quietly, "It's not him."

It's never him. Thousands of miles of highways and motel rooms and church parking lots, and it's only the two of them, their family torn down.

Sam's torn down.

Dean carries him out of the bar, his arm around Sam's waist. Sam got tall real quick, taller than Dean by the time he was fourteen, taller than their father a year later. Hard to fight with Dean for a couple of years, when they were training for the war ahead, Sam kept forgetting the new length of his arms and his legs, the twist of his body out of Dean's hold. Their dad shouting, "Use your height, Sammy!" Shouting, "Pin the skinny motherfucker, Dean!"

Mixed messages like Dean hot under his arm, Dean's hand hasped in the waist of Sam's jeans. The traffic signals are broken, flickering red-yellow-green over and over again. Sam's head is spinning. Cherry blossoms litter the sidewalk.

" _Walk_ , Sam, use your damn legs," Dean mutters, and Sam mouths, 'use your height.'

Flips and whirls and then Dean is pinned to a brick wall, blinking in astonishment, and Sam grins with blood on his teeth, because Dean is strong but Sam has always been faster.

"What?" Dean asks, orange streetlight in his eyes. Sam wishes more than almost anything that he could leave his brother behind.

He touches their foreheads and breathes on Dean's mouth and Dean's hands come up on his hips. Sam can vaguely see Dean's eyes darting side to side, making sure they're not being watched, because towns like this, they don't have to be brothers for it to be wrong.

I think we're going to hell, Sam wants to say. Legions of pissed-off demons waiting for them, everything they've ever killed. An army, and there are only two of them now.

He can't speak. He's so tired he could cry, and he falls into Dean, his face against the brick and his hands clinging to Dean's shirt. Dean takes him back to the car and lays him out in the backseat, his legs hanging out the open door.

Sam tries to reach for Dean, but fair's fair and Dean says, "Don't."

Sam starts to hallucinate somewhere in Iowa, smears of color on the windshield, the high clouds warping and making faces at him. He doesn't tell Dean, who is wearing highway patrolman sunglasses and riding with his elbow out the window. Giddy laughter scrambles up his throat and his chest hurts from holding it back.

Dean's hands crush up a soda can and chuck it into a trashcan. He follows a pretty girl with his gaze all the way down the street, and Sam is leaning back against the car, watching in exhaustion. He looks at himself in motel bathroom mirrors and his eyes look like burn marks. Dean is over his shoulder, fuzzy and wet-haired.

Sam sees a beheaded corpse walking along the side of the highway and turns on the dome light, knowing it irritates Dean, reads their dad's diary until his mind is splintered and his throat cries out for his brother. Evil is all around them.

In some back alley somewhere, they're fighting again, as they've been trained. Sam lands a hit to Dean's side and Dean bloodies Sam's nose and Sam isn't sure whether this is practice or if they're actually mad at each other. He can't remember what he said.

They end up on their knees on the ground, their arms looped around each other's shoulders. Breathing so hard it sounds like a car engine. Dean's cheek scratches Sam's neck and Sam starts to cry. Can't do this anymore, he wants to say, but then Dean's mouth is open on the place where Sam's shoulder meets his neck, and Sam is broken like a curse.

Dean's hands are wide and careful on Sam's body as the bruises rise, and Sam forces him to go harder and faster and take no time, because time is the one thing they have too much of. Time and roads that lead absolutely fucking nowhere, Dean's fingers dug into Sam's ribs and Sam's blood on Dean's face. It's the same blood, anyway.

Sam sleeps, his brother in the same bed. There are three inches between them and Sam dreams that it could stay that way.

Wakes up screaming and Dean's gone. Sam strips the bed and wishes he could burn the sheets. His head is killing him. He weeps in the shower and writes his dead girlfriend's name on the bathroom mirror in soap, and then Dean is back with coffee and chocolate and a bite mark on his neck.

The sky is blue outside, though the air smells of rain. Sam can define faith but not recognize it, and he can bitch at his brother for not bringing enough sugar for both coffees, and he can live for weeks and months without sleeping and his hands stained red. He can pray for his father's voice and his girlfriend's smile and a memory of his mother's laugh, but all that's left to him is Dean's cruel clean eyes and the salvation therein, so Sam takes the keys from his brother and shows his teeth when Dean raises a protest.

They drive.

THE END


End file.
